Bayview befouled by illegal dumping; Recology goes...

1of11Department of Public Works employees Alberto Bustamante (left), Byron Paz and George Preciado scoop illegally dumped garbage into a Recology truck in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood.Photo: Photos by Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

2of11A Recology truck pulls up to a pile of illegally dumped garbage, a chronic problem in the Bayview.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

3of11Bayview resident and business owner Miko Hammond (right), talks with Tessa Jones (left) and Rachel Gordon of the city’s Department of Public Works about his frustration with the illegal dumping on the neighborhood streets.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

4of11Public Works employees Alberto Bustamante (left), Byron Paz and Tessa Jones clear illegally dumped garbage, including a refrigerator, into a Recology truck in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

5of11Department of Public Works employees Byron Paz (left), George Preciado and Alberto Bustamante load illegally dumped garbage into a Recology truck in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

6of11Public Works supervisor Tessa Jones looks through illegally dumped garbage to find three pieces of mail to confirm the identity of the dumper in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

7of11Department of Public Works employees Byron Paz (left), Alberto Bustamante and George Preciado load illegally dumped garbage into a Recology truck in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

8of11Department of Public Works employees Alberto Bustamante (left), Byron Paz and George Preciado load an illegally dumped mattress into a Recology truck in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

9of11Department of Public Works employees Byron Paz (left) and George Preciado pick up an illegally dumped mattress in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

10of11A Recology truck backs up to a pile of illegally dumped garbage in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

11of11Department of Public Works employee Byron Paz picks up books in a pile of illegally dumped garbage in the Bayview district.Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

One night last month, on a quiet street in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, a private investigator hunkered down in a nondescript van with blacked-out windows.

Equipped with a camera, he was assigned to stake out a corridor known to attract some of the Bayview’s most prolific petty criminals: scofflaws dumping small mountains of garbage on the neighborhood’s alleys, streets and sidewalks.

His night’s work proved fruitful. In a single evening, the investigator witnessed and photographed two trucks dumping all manner of detritus onto the street.

He presented his evidence, including pictures of the perpetrators’ license plates, to his client for that evening: Recology, the Bay Area waste management company and San Francisco’s contractual partner in grime. Recology presented the investigator’s report to the city’s Public Works Department, which sent it to the district attorney’s office.

Given the costs of hiring a private investigator to keep an all-night vigil for illicit disposal, such stakeouts are unlikely to become common. But the episode is emblematic of a renewed push by officials to clamp down on illegal dumping citywide, particularly in the Bayview, which for decades has been the neighborhood where some of the most egregious examples have taken place.

“It’s got to stop. It’s not fair for our families to walk or drive past trash every day. It’s not fair for our community to be dumped on,” said new Supervisor Shamann Walton, whose district includes Bayview-Hunters Point. The mounds of refuse that collect in his district, he said, are an all-too-literal reinforcement of the Bayview’s reputation as an industrial dumping ground. Cracking down on illegal dumping, he said, is a major part of his plan to improve quality of life in the Bayview.

Public Works employees Byron Paz (left), Alberto Bustamante and George Preciado load illegally dumped garbage into a Recology truck in the Bayview district.

Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

Part of Public Works’ strategy involves asking Bayview business owners near known dumping hot spots to install security cameras on their buildings, with the goal of catching the perpetrators in the act — and maybe a license number too.

Another technique: Public Works has investigators combing through piles of debris, searching for clues to lead them back to who tossed the trash.

“We’re going to be aggressive about this. We want our streets to be beautiful and pristine, just like other parts of the city,” he said. In the coming weeks, Walton said he would begin discussions about increasing fines for illegal dumping, which currently range from $250 to $1,000. He’s also interested in giving the city the ability to confiscate the vehicles offenders use to offload their trash.

The rubbish epidemic isn’t limited to the Bayview, but the neighborhood is unique in the type and volume of trash it attracts, Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru said. While there’s no shortage of household waste being jettisoned, most of the illicit debris in the Bayview appears to be coming from construction projects.

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And as the city’s last industrial enclave, many of the most isolated parts of the Bayview “get very quiet at night,” Nuru said, giving dumpers the chance to do their dirty work under the cover of darkness, usually with no witnesses around.

“You come up on a pile, and it’s all shingles from a commercial roofing job, so it’s obviously a roofer that dumped,” said Paul Giusti, a community and government affairs manager at Recology. The company responded to more than 11,000 calls to the city’s 311 service portal for abandoned waste in the Bayview alone last year.

Discarded lumber studded with nails; wet, crumbling drywall; and leaky paint cans and 50-gallon oil drums are commonly picked up by Recology and Public Works crews, Giusti said.

“We’re talking big commercial companies that are dumping, where we have to go in with heavy equipment, and that’s costly,” Giusti said. “We don’t want anyone to dump illegally, and it’s not fair that the Bayview bears the brunt of that illegal dumping and the destruction of their environment.”

Alberto Bustamante (left), Byron Paz, and George Preciado work with Recology truck driver Roberto Zamudio to clear up trash.

Photo: Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

The trash is also hampering the city’s ability to reduce the amount of material deposited in landfills. Some of the construction-site debris may contain asbestos or other contaminants, making it difficult or impossible for crews to separate recyclable material from the pile.

“They’re out there scooping it up with tractors. There could be dirt in it, lead-painted wood, and there’s much less opportunity to get into the material and do the proper separation of it,” Giusti said.

Cleanup costs are also sapping city resources — to the tune of $8 million to $10 million each year, Nuru said.

“It’s a huge cost. Just think of what you could do with that money,” Nuru said. “We’re having to use those resources to tackle this problem.”

Over a three-week period last month — Dec. 10 to 28 — Public Works gathered a staggering 542,660 pounds of illegally dumped trash.

Nuru is convinced that the cause of illegal dumping in the Bayview is people avoiding paying Recology’s fees at the company’s Tunnel Avenue disposal site. The company charges a $50 minimum fee for “general refuse” disposal, and $189.08 per ton.

The fact that many contractors charge their clients for waste removal, only to dump their garbage on the Bayview’s streets, exasperates Walton.

“It’s extremely troubling that people that operate in our city take so many shortcuts to save money and that at the same time — to use a better term — defecate on our streets,” he said.

Business owner Abby Conklin of A52 Signs & Graphics was happy to oblige when Public Works asked her to help out by installing a camera. She plans to put one up — at her own expense — that aims its gaze across the street from her shop on Quesada Avenue, where masses of trash routinely pile up. It’s gotten so bad at times, she said, that trash spills from the sidewalk onto the street, blocking an entire traffic lane.

“It’s really frustrating when you’re trying to run a business,” she said. “We have a business here where people bring their vehicles, and they’re pulling up in front of this big pile of trash. I’ve seen painters pull up and just dump cans of paint. What are you doing to your neighborhood?”

Dominic Fracassa covers San Francisco City Hall for The Chronicle. He previously worked as a reporter and editor for the Daily Journal, a legal affairs newspaper. He started in news in his home state of Michigan, where he worked as a news director of 103.9 WLEN.